Montenegro!!

Yesterday was my SAS trip to Montenegro and it was so pretty because it is completely mountains (the name Montenegro means black mountains).  We left at 8:00am and drove for about an hour to reach the border.  We all had to show our passports for customs and we got held up for a little because a girl on our trip was from Peru and couldn’t go through because of her visa.  Then we drove for another 2 hours just completely around 4 different bays of the Montenegro coastline.  It was really beautiful, but hard to stay awake through all the turning.  We finally made it to a small town called Kotor where we got a very brief tour and then 30 min of free time to walk around a little.  It was a really cute town, very similar to the ones in Croatia that I went to the day before.

After free time we went back on the bus and proceeded to drive up a mountain.  It took almost an hour and a half of crazy driving on a tiny road that could barely fit our bus.  The best part was that it was a 2 way road so we would have to stop and cars pull off or reverse a little until there was an area to pull off if we were going in opposite directions.  It was so crazy to see how close we were to the edge on that mountain road.  Our guide said that they hold races there sometimes and I definitely can’t imagine that being very safe.  Once we reached the top of the mountain we were able to stop and take pictures for a few minutes.  Then we drove to a tiny village called Njeguši.  It was nestled high in the mountains in a little flat valley area.  We stopped there for a snack of ham and cheese sandwiches and a choice of drink (I had some white wine of course).  The sandwiches were really good because they actually like make the ham up there in the town – it was something similar to prosciutto.  Then we drove all the way back down the same mountain road again.

Then we drove to the town of Budva which is a main place for tourism in Montenegro and where they have a lot of big hotels and a great beach and stuff.  We went to a restaurant for lunch where we had chicken noodle soup, salad, chicken, potatoes, and peas.  The food was alright but definitely not my favorite meal provided by SAS.  Then we had another 30 min of free time so we got gelato and walked to the beach and stuff.  There was actually a lot to do in that town so I wish we would have had more time to spend there.  We all got back on the buses and drove all the way back to Dubrovnik.  Instead of driving around all the bays on the way back we were able to take a ferry across the largest bay so it knocked about 30 min off the drive.  We still didn’t get back to the ship until a little after 8:00pm.

All in all, the trip had some of the most beautiful scenery that I have seen, but there was a lot of time spent driving on the bus.  We were gone for 12 hours total and were on the bus for 8.5 hours out of the 12 which is a little ridiculous.  But I am definitely glad I went on the trip because it was an absolutely beautiful place (even prettier that Croatia if that’s even possible).  I definitely have some beautiful pictures and I really need to start planning my vacation to come back here!